Dear Florida State Senator,

Although many could argue that the Electoral College is a fair system of deciding the president, far too many people consider it non-democratic and unefficient for it it continue being our way of electing our leader. A new system of election must be created to make up for the pitfalls that are inevitable in the Electoral College. A country that is supposed to be a democracy does not have the voting system that such a proud democracy deserves.

Defenders of the College may say that the possibility of a tie is very low or that the  electors chosen are confirmed not to betray the wants of the voters, but just because the possibility is low does not mean you can simply allow the flaws in the voting system to exist. A small hole in a fabric can only grow bigger, and the same goes for our electoral college. If we can't repair or replace the fabric that is our Electoral College, soon there will be problems too big for us to deal with in our current state. The electoral voters may keep the public in mind for now, but there have already been cases where electoral voters put their own wants ahead of the public.

One thing that the Electoral College does not promote is the power in the hands of the people. Although people can vote for whatever candidate they want, the elector is the real deciding hand in the process of picking our president. If one wanted to, an elector can completely disregard the decision of the voters and choose who they want. Considering the ratio of electors in some states to people, it seems completely non-democratic for the votes of some to be more important than the wants of the common people. Some start to feel that they shouldn't vote because their one vote wouldn't have the power to change anything, and wouldn't even ensure the election of the president they want. Another thing that lowers the morale is the absence of candidates in states that can't be won very easily. If a candidate is pretty sure he can't win over a state, he won't visit it because it wouldn't be worth his time. He also wil prioritize large states over small ones because they have more electoral votes. All of these can make a state or person feel as if the election isn't really in their hands, and when people feel like their vote doesn't matter, they don't vote.

Besides the power it takes away from the common man, some could say that the system itself is very inefficient compared to what it could be. Even though it has a very low possibility, the fact is that a tie is possible due to the electoral college having an even number of votes. It would then go to the House of Representatives, who might not even have the want of the people in mind. Since most of the time Congress has a party that makes up a majority of it, it would be very unfair to allow them to pick the president. It's also possible that even if a majority of the people vote for a president, the electoral votes elect the other candidate instead, like what happened to Al Gore in 2000. An election like this just has too many holes and pitfalls to be efficient. The holes need to be repaired before we can actually use this as our primary way to select a president, or else we're setting ourselves up to have problems in the future.

The Electoral College may be functional, but is largely inefficient and is not in the best interest of the common people. The vote for a candidate is not even in the hands in the people, but rather a minority of chosen electors. In a country that prides itself on the power the people have, and the control they have on how their country is run, the people have surprisingly less influence than you would think. We as a people need to speak up against the overrated system that is the Electoral College, and develop a system that fits the needs of a true democracy like America should be.            